An audit to be released Monday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli raises “real doubts’’ about the value of Gov. Cuomo’s $200 million-plus “Start Up NY’’ advertising campaign to attract businesses to the state, The Post has learned.
The widely anticipated audit of the 1½-year-old program comes just a month after the Cuomo administration conceded the Start Up program, touted by the governor as a “game changer’’ for the state, had created only 76 jobs in 2014.
The new audit found that the massive national television advertising campaign for the Start Up tax-reduction program did virtually nothing to generate interest among businesses in coming to New York, a source familiar with the findings told The Post.
“The audit found that even though a significant amount of money was spent on Start Up NY advertising, the advertising did not increase the number of applications for the Start Up program,’’ said the source.
“The audit reveals real doubts about whether the advertising results can justify the costs that were involved.’’.
The audit, nearly a year in preparation by DiNapoli, is expected to provoke an angry response from fellow Democrat Cuomo, who has repeatedly claimed the program would generate thousands of jobs in financially hard-pressed areas of the state.
A wide range of critics, including Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, the Republican gubernatorial candidate against Cuomo last year, have called the Start Up program a waste of money and accused the governor of using it to boost his popularity.
They also charged that a large number of the commercials began appearing on New York television stations in the months leading up to the gubernatorial campaign.
The program, which was run by BBDO USA, a major national advertising firm, started out with a $50 million price tag but then was ratcheted up four times, with a final cost of more than $200 million, which includes the TV advertising.
Cuomo claimed last week that he had “nothing to do’’ with Glenwood Management Corp., the controversial, influence-seeking company controlled by Manhattan real-estate mogul Leonard Litwin that has been cited in the federal corruption charges brought last week against Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) and in January against then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).
But that doesn’t appear to be Glenwood’s view of things.
“They are a donor of mine. They are a donor of many elected officials . . . and that’s basically the interaction. I’ve had nothing to do, except they’ve been political supporters of mine,’’ Cuomo told reporters in Syracuse.
However, the most recent lobbying records filed with the Joint Commission on Public Ethics show that Litwin’s Glenwood, a major beneficiary of real-estate tax incentives, which has directly or indirectly contributed more than $1 million to Cuomo’s campaigns, was lobbying the governor’s office at least as recently as February.
The records reveal that Glenwood hired Mark L. Lieberman for $15,000 in January and February to lobby the “NYS Assembly, NYS Governor’s office and its agencies & authorities, NYS Senate.’’
Cuomo backtracked on another aspect of his relationship with Glenwood late last week, conceding that he had “forgotten’’ about three meetings he had with Litwin and the company’s top officials in 2011.
Republicans are looking to an upstate Democrat as a possibly tie-breaking vote this week to keep the state Senate in GOP hands amid the chaos resulting from the imminent replacement of scandal-scarred Senate leader Skelos.
As a result of the illness of Sen. Tom Libous of Binghamton, the Republicans may be one vote short of the 32 votes needed to pick Skelos’ replacement, but an extra vote could come from Democratic Sen. David Valesky of Syracuse, GOP insiders told The Post.
Valesky has a close relationship with Finance Committee Chairman John DeFrancisco, who also represents Syracuse, and “could make a strong case that having DeFrancisco as the majority leader would enormously benefit his region,’’ said a Senate GOP source.
DeFrancisco, as The Post disclosed last week, is battling Sen. John Flanagan (R-Suffolk) to become Skelos’ replacement.